Description
Where are we most at home? Probably in bed. However much one likes being in other places, there reaches a point where one wishes for one’s own bed. Everyone has experienced this physical and emotional process and it is widely accepted. One’s own bed is the innermost part of one’s house, the “nest” from which one flies every morning and to which one returns. For this reason, most people would like to die in their own bed, to gently fall asleep and never wake up.
This feeling we also apply to our entire home. With only very few exceptions, nobody wants to have to leave their home in old age. The longer one has lived there, the stronger one’s desire to stay. One’s home serves as an anchor, a place where one feels secure and that gives a sense of meaning to things. As long as I have my home I am the same person I have always been. To give up one’s home, therefore, represents the loss of a part of one’s self. This sense of loss is irrefutable and, given the anthropological development of mankind, will most probably always be the case.
It becomes problematic when, for a variety of reasons, segregative forms of living in old age result. The reasons are for the most part health-related, but can also result from social or economic circumstances or because the existing living environment is no longer being used. There are no homes that can “grow” and “shrink”. However, very often it is not the home itself that necessitates a move but changes in the person’s environment. For older people, it is much more important to feel safe in their surroundings than for younger people, and sometimes it is detrimental changes to local districts, even entire towns, that cause people to feel forced to move away.
In most cases, when old people give up their own home they move into a more isolated form of living, whether into an individual house with apartments especially for older people, high-quality “residences” for seniors or even entire “Sun Cities” as in the USA. Despite many advantages with regard to safety, comfort, acceptance or appropriateness, a certain stigma remains: the richness of life, of choice, is reduced. It is replaced by a select offering of specially designed products and living environments. Flats become sheltered flats for old people, visits to the cinema are reduced to occasional film evenings, living with children is reduced to isolated visits. We realise that what we actually want is to retain the vitality of our lives around us, even though we may make less and less actual use of it, and that if we are to move into a new home and cannot keep everything, we want to keep as much as possible. Above all, we must avoid aspects of life from falling away entirely, whether it is our personal availability, security or social relations.
How can we transpose “normal life” into this new, in a sense “fabricated” life? This is the key question: regardless of issues of money, health or family relations, it is the art of living, the way in which we lead our lives that constitutes our culture of everyday life. The problem is that this is different for each and every one of us. One of the greatest challenges for architects, urban planners and designers is to allow individual people to maintain their own everyday way of life, one that largely corresponds to their biographical background, and to provide a “substitute” or “vignette” of their life in as natural a form as possible, even if it may appear nonsensical to us. The sole governing criteria for the design of living environments for the elderly should be the well-being of the resident.
If one subscribes to this opinion, a number of maxims follow. The most important of these is probably the freedom of choice within a diverse range of alternatives. The sophistication of everyday life does not level off with age but in fact becomes particularly apparent. As people grow older, they have a more precise idea of their preferences than younger people. They are also able to articulate these more strongly as they are less likely to expect sanctions, and furthermore are in most cases more realistic in their expectations and self-awareness. Accordingly, older people know very well what they like from the choices available, as well as what they can afford.
New developments in society, which can be seen around the world, in which society has grown older more or less en bloc – the section of society between 60 and 80 is growing fastest in comparison to all other age groups – mean that we can and will need to experiment greatly in order to cope with this comparatively new situation. In fact, it is not a case of can but of must. In this process, the better quality solution will always be the enemy of the cheap surrogate, and solutions that take a larger view will outstrip those with smaller aims. Larger and better often translate as more expensive. Then again, more investment in the search for the right culture of everyday life will help us to learn more. Similarly, an authentic solution takes more seriously than a surrogate.
In contrast to today’s older generation, it is difficult to identify the needs of the coming generation of senior citizens. Today’s over 50-year-olds find themselves in a transitional period from protective to leisure-oriented values. Like the rest of society, this target group – the so-called sandwich generation between 55 and 65 years of age – is separating into ever more micro-segments. The variety of lifestyles has never been so complex or contradictory. In addition, improved medical care has extended life expectancy and with it the period of “active old age”. Trend researchers speak of the phenomenon of “down ageing”: old people already feel ten to 15 years younger than they did 30 years ago. The third phase of life of “young old age” is for most people a productive and eventful period. The fourth phase of life now denotes the over 80-year-olds and is commonly characterised by more serious illness, dementia and ongoing nursing care, sometimes also multimorbidity.
The housing market for the elderly – especially for the third phase of life – will need to provide a wide variety of different offerings to cater for wide-ranging demands. In addition to flexible floor plan concepts, IT and household technology equipment (air climate control, security systems, internet and multimedia) as well as ecology will feature more heavily. In addition, younger pensioners will in future want to have a greater say in the form and organisation of alternative housing projects. For the operator, this means that for such projects they will need to factor in a longer preparatory period for their calculations. On the other hand, the operator can use this as a means of achieving greater customer loyalty.
Today’s consumer generation is used to choosing between brand name products and service offerings on an everyday basis, using image as a key criteria of choice. Using a system comparable to the star grading of hotel facilities, nursing home care providers are increasingly implementing quality standards for their facilities. These denote the kind of floor plans, the quality of furnishings, materials and technology as well as the care and service concept. Similarly, housing providers may in future use corporate identity elements in their architecture, residential environment and concept to create “built atmospheres” to distinguish themselves from competitors in the market-place. Where such identities resonate with personal values, this may help create a sense of belonging and feeling at home for the residents.
A lifestyle oriented around wellness is becoming increasingly important – especially with regard to the growing relevance of self-sufficiency – for the “50 plus generation”. Well-being is likewise the motto for the living environment. Wellness offerings are already becoming more and more part of everyday life. Co-operation with wellness centres, freelance personal trainers and the like in order to provide wellness offerings in the locality or at home can attract residents – and not just older residents. Furthermore, today’s pensioners are more mobile than ever. Globalised work structures have brought with them the experience of life in transit with short stays in hotels or boarding houses. As more and more of the “greying society” choose to live part of the year in other countries with a more Mediterranean climate, or spend large parts of the year travelling, the home takes on a more temporary character. Housing providers for the elderly could respond to the needs of this group by providing assisted living in temporary housing units, coupled with service offerings (also when absent) provided by neighbouring hotels or senior residences.
New technologies, as used in so-called “smart houses”, such as “voice butlers” and the like, make it easier for the “silver surfer” to manage everyday needs. Sensors and voice-controlled systems can control blinds and room temperature. Toilets with an internet connection are already available, which send the results of urine tests and fat analyses via email to the doctor’s laboratory. Alongside the technology boom, one can also observe a growing ecological awareness, particularly among the age group of the early ecology movement, as well as a social conscience with regard to following generations. The increasing demand for ecologically-friendly building methods will in future also be pursued for economical reasons.
However, despite the demand for greater flexibility in old age, a fundamental need for a sense of place and of belonging still exists. According to a recent study by the trend researchers Trendbüro in Hamburg, the desire for a flexible dual residency arrangement goes hand in hand with a longing for “home sweet home”. The dissolution of family structures and friends as relations spread around the globe can be compensated for through informal communal structures in one’s local neighbourhood.
Small wonder, then, that the best examples of housing for the elderly are to be found in the northern hemisphere of the world, in Western Europe, North America and in Japan. Anything else would be a surprise: in societies where the elderly are cared for in the family there are no new segregative forms of living – but there is also no freedom of choice to live one’s own independent life. So where can the Americans, Swedes, Dutch or we ourselves expect to find the best examples, the most active experiments and the most precise architectonic expression? In those countries where projects are being built with the highest ideals and the necessary financial investment: in Switzerland for example. Here several factors come together – a land without fear of war, with democratic self-goverment in small communities and general prosperity accumulated over generations – that contribute to a notion of living in old age that comes close to that of “paradise in old age” in all its forms, including in its care for people with dementia.
The cultural differences between countries such as Holland with its strong sense of community, or a country like Sweden with a strong state welfare programme, result in systems for the care of the elderly with different characteristics: some, such as in Sweden, are more focused around outpatient care, others around inpatient care. In all countries, however, and particularly in more prosperous societies, there is an increasing awareness that the more old people are able to be cared for in the familiar surroundings of their own living environment the better. In some cases, in-patient care is relegated to little more than emergency care provision. But here too, the same applies: the more homely the environment the better. Regardless of the quality of medical and nursing care, elderly people must be given more than just a semblance of living; they should be able to retain as many aspects of their life as possible.
Originally published in: Eckhard Feddersen, Insa Lüdtke, Living for the Elderly: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2011.